What is Agile Release Train
An Agile Release Train, or ART, is a long-lived, self-organized team that plans, commits, and executes together. Agile Release Train is a long-term team of team with a maximum size of 150 people.
ART is a virtual organization of multiple teams. Ideally, 10 teams at maximum are assigned to the Agile Release Train. It is a cross-functional team of teams responsible for the delivery of large business value defined by epics, their capabilities, features, and user stories.
ART connects teams who work on the same product, but different parts of it. There are dependencies that are the most consumer-type of relations. The whole ART is planning iterations, so-called Program Increments, in the Innovation and Planning iteration.
Teams are assigned to the ART with full-time capacity.
Agile Release Train usually supports one Value stream of the company, while the value stream can be supported by multiple ARTs at the same time.
Agile Release Train is led by the Release Train Engineer (RTE) who supports the self-organization of the RTE with help of ART’s Scrum Masters. RTE collaborates with Product Management and Sofware Architect roles.
ART continuously improves their way of working in regular Inspect & Adapt (I&A) sessions and embraces the Agile Manifesto principles.
- The schedule is fixed.
- A new system increment every two weeks.
- The Program Increment timebox is fixed – All teams on the train are synchronized to the same PI length (typically 8 – 12 weeks).
- The train has a known velocity.
- Agile Teams.
- Dedicated people.
- Face-to-face PI Planning.
- Innovation and Planning (IP).
- Inspect and Adapt (I&A).
- Develop on Cadence. Release on Demand.
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